Ratha’s Challenge (The Fourth Book of The Named) (16 page)

The face-tail bull, his hide gashed by many claws and teeth, backed too close to the cliff edge. The rock and soil crumbled beneath his weight. With a brassy scream he, too, was gone, leaving only the female and her calf to face the hunters.

Her jaws opening in dismay, Ratha stared at True-of-voice, who was at the center of the hunters’ line.

Do you have to kill all of them?

But what had been set in motion could not be stopped, even by the one who had created it. The song possessed them all and it was filled with the need to attack and slaughter, even after there was enough meat to fill their bellies many times over.

Thistle had said it. The hunters repeated what they had already done, unable to stop or change. Perhaps that had served them well in the past, but if they continued to hunt like this, they would destroy the prey that sustained them.

But the song would not allow any questions, any doubts.

The face-tail calf screeched in terror as the hunters flanking True-of-voice engulfed it and dragged it away from the enraged mother. The female’s roar of anger turned to a roar of grief as the calf’s shrilling was abruptly cut off. The shaggy animal charged the hunters twice and was repelled easily, for they were prepared for her desperate attempt to rescue her calf.

What they were not prepared for was the face-tail’s attack on True-of-voice. As if the great beast sensed that he was the source of the will that drove the hunters, she turned on him.

Ratha, hidden, saw instantly that True-of-voice had been left dangerously unprotected by the others in their eagerness to bring down the face-tail calf. Now, with yowls of dismay, they sprang to his defense, but too late. The face-tail shook off their attacks. True-of-voice sought to escape, but the flailing, beating trunk found him and wound about his leg.

It flipped the gray leader on his back and dragged him to the edge of the abyss. Raking the face-tail’s forehead with his back claws and twisting around to drive his foreclaws into the rocks and dirt, True-of-voice mounted a frenzied battle.

From behind the hunters’ line, Ratha saw two figures charge through—the male called Quiet Hunter and her own Thistle. With a roar, she leaped from cover to her daughter’s side. She heard Thakur follow. Flattening her ears, she snaked her head around, ready to launch an attack on anyone who threatened Thistle. No one did. All gazes were locked on the cliff edge, the female face-tail, and True-of-voice.

Slowly, relentlessly, the leader of the hunters was being dragged backward, his claws leaving trails in the dirt. Quiet Hunter and others grabbed him by the scruff and the paws, but the vengeful face-tail was stronger. Her eyes reddened by rage, her black, shaggy pelt stained with blood, the beast wrenched True-of-voice from his rescuers. With a jerk she pulled him to the brink and flung him over.

The face-tail unleashed the rest of her wrath against the ones who had tried to save their leader. Ratha heard Thistle screech in dismay as a vicious downswing of the face-tail’s trunk clubbed Quiet Hunter in the ribs and sent him tumbling to one side.

And then, as if she had made her choice, the red-eyed, shaggy-pelted animal pivoted on the brink and let herself topple to join her slaughtered companions below. With a hail of rocks, she was gone, and the dust was already settling on the bloodied and torn ground where True-of-voice had fought for his life.

* * *

To Thistle, the song screamed in a blending of voices high and low. It was True-of-voice himself and all those that sang through him. The fierce hunting sound of the song turned into the sound of terror, a fang thrust through the mind. Then all was bleak and quiet.

She had been in the center of the song, rushing with Quiet Hunter to defend the beloved singer. Now she was snatched away, thrust back into the caverns inside herself. They were no longer jeweled and shimmering with the light of the song. As if a vaulted arch had fallen in, blocking the sun rays from above, all went dark. The shadows took possession. And shadows were where the Dreambiter prowled.

What had been a haven for her was now a threat. She fled outward, as if the rumble behind her were the sound of a cave-in. Yet the paths to the outside, once well-known, had become little-used and forgotten. Like the hunters, she, too, was trapped, and though she ran to the side of the beloved one who had fallen under the face-tail’s strike, she could not break through to him. She could only fling herself against the inward walls that would not yield to either panic or rage. And soon, close behind her, she heard the echoing growl of the Dreambiter.

* * *

The battle was over. Finished. Ratha let out the breath she was holding, moved legs that felt as though they had been frozen. Thakur was already urging her away silently, with pressure from his body. She resisted, looking frantically for Thistle. Her daughter was there, crouching beside a breathless and dazed Quiet Hunter.

The other hunters looked dazed, too, even though they hadn’t been struck by the face-tail. They milled in confusion at the edge of the drop-off, as if unable to comprehend what had happened.

In an instant everything had changed. True-of-voice was gone. Had the song gone with him?

Ratha saw the answer in the shocked and stricken look in Thistle’s eyes, in the way Quiet Hunter, who had been the bravest of the hunters in his attempt to free True-of-voice, now lay shaking and helpless on the ground.

True-of-voice was gone. Without him as the source of the song that moved and shaped their actions, the hunters were as helpless as newborn cubs.

Ratha felt a bleakness within her and a sense of horror as she watched the hunters turn to one another, lost and frightened, perhaps for the first time in their lives. And Thistle ... her Thistle ... shared their loss, their agony. Thistle’s agony was overwhelming her as well. Ratha knew how deeply her daughter cared for Quiet Hunter.

But isn’t this what you wanted; isn’t this what you worked for?
a voice spoke inside her.
You said you wanted the hunters dead. Without True-of-voice, they essentially are. There is no opposition now. The Named will prevail.

She suddenly wished that things had not happened this way. True-of-voice did not deserve this. Nor did his people. Nor her daughter.

Thakur moved closer to her, silently communicating his presence, his support. He was the one who knew Thistle best. She wanted to ask him to go to her daughter and offer the comfort that she could not.

Let him comfort her so that I can back away ... again,
she thought miserably. But then suddenly something flamed up inside her, as hot and strong as the Red Tongue itself.
No. I’m not going to shy away from her any longer. I care too much about her.

Ratha glanced warily at the hunters, wondering if she should avoid them, but they were all so preoccupied with the loss of their leader that they could only sit and stare or walk in dazed circles. All she got was a puzzled look or a halfhearted growl as she made her way through them toward her daughter.

Thistle, who had been crouching beside Quiet Hunter, raised her muzzle and stared directly at Ratha. It was hard for Ratha to keep walking toward her, to keep gazing into her eyes. Her overwhelming urge was to veer off, to drop her gaze, to run.

But Ratha met the sea-green stare and felt the grief deep within it. Forgetting everything else, she bounded to her daughter. With a wild flurry of her heart, she saw Thistle leap toward her—not to attack in protest or anger, but to bury her head against Ratha’s chest.

Flinging her paws about her daughter, the leader of the Named gathered Thistle to her, holding her fiercely.

Thistle, my cub, my walker on strange trails. Come to me. Whatever harms you, I will fight it; whatever hurts you, I will heal it. I am the one who birthed you and wounded you. Now let me help you.

The thickness in her throat made her half purr, half growl as she said softly, “Tell me.”

Thistle’s voice was ragged, broken. Her ribs heaved as she gasped, “True-of-voice. The song. Ended. Everything. Gone. Lost. Left only ... hurt.”

“Not everything has ended for you,” Ratha said. “I know you care about Quiet Hunter and his people. I know the song was important, even if I didn’t understand it.”

“Can’t live if song ends!” Thistle cried, barely able to speak. Her eyes were swirling, her pupils remote. She began to shake, with the same sort of shuddering that was racking Quiet Hunter. Thakur was crouched down beside the young male, trying all his healing skills to soothe and calm him.

“Yes you can,” Ratha said, gently but firmly. “You can walk both their trails and ours. Come back from the strange trails, my Named one.”

“Not Named,” Thistle said in a low moan. “Inside, no names, no knowing.” Her voice faltered, faded.

Ratha sensed that her daughter was slipping into the same abyss of helpless despair that was claiming the hunters. With a rising despair of her own, she knew she would lose Thistle. Unless ...

“Thistle-chaser. That is your name. I gave it to you. I’ll be meat for maggots if I let you refuse it! As Named and leader of the Named, I command you to come back to me, my Thistle-chaser.”

But the only answer was in the strangely swirling eyes with their shifting green sea.

In the endless dark, where dread sent her fleeing toward madness, something suddenly loomed ahead. Not so much seen, but heard and felt. Her name, spoken in her mother’s voice.

Her name shone ahead. Thistle. Thistle-chaser. Named and spoken and known.

She who could run on many paths remembered the ones she had run among the Named. She launched herself toward the inside cavern wall that had once been unyielding and suddenly she was through, from inside herself to outside, from ocean into air, from entrancement to awareness. She gasped, taking a huge breath as if she had risen from beneath a murky sea into sharp, clear air.

She blinked as if she had indeed been swimming in the salt ocean instead of a sea of the mind. But what stung her like ocean brine and made her eyes run was not salt, but mixed joy and grief.

Joy because she felt her mother’s caring, the power in the forelegs that embraced her, the fire of body and spirit that surrounded her, the raw devotion in a voice that said she was Named and known and deeply loved....

Grief as well, because outside the protective circle that Ratha and Thakur formed about her, she saw True-of-voice’s people. Some were pacing in circles, others huddled and shuddering like Quiet Hunter. Some were in mindless fights, as if what they had just lost had been stolen and could be wrestled back.

She could run on paths inside and outside. The dream-walking hunters could not. They were trapped inside, in caverns that had once echoed with the beauty of the song, but now held only emptiness.

They who were fearless killers were now parentless cubs. For them the world had become a wilderness, the wind keening with unanswered questions.

And among them, trapped in emptiness, was Quiet Hunter.

When she pushed gently against her mother’s clasp, Ratha let her go and, apparently understanding, gave her a gentle nudge toward Quiet Hunter. Thakur gave her a brief welcoming lick, then moved aside to let her get close to the stricken young male.

Thistle tried to reach out to Quiet Hunter in the way she had done before, in the way she knew that True-of-voice had once done. She sensed a wounded bleakness in him, as if something had reached cruelly inside and torn out the core of his being.

She crouched beside Quiet Hunter, rubbing against him, licking him, trying to warm him with her body, move him with her voice. Trying to bring him outside to where there was life, even if it was bare and no longer enfolded by the rapture of the song. To where there was light, even if it was clear, sharp, and cold.

But there was no path for Quiet Hunter to the outside, she sensed sadly. The only trail was one she herself had showed him. He had ventured along it only a short way before turning back.

She knew, in the bareness and clearness and coldness of life, that the end of the song meant the end of being for Quiet Hunter and his kind. Not for her. With her mother’s gift of name and knowing, she could jump the abyss of loss and despair, or bridge it with her two states of being. Quiet Hunter had only one. His approach to the chasm would be a plunge into death.

Chapter Nineteen

In the settling dust, Thakur stood over Quiet Hunter, nosing him gently. With a grunt of surprise, he said, “I thought he was dead, Ratha, but he’s not. Maybe I can help him.”

Ratha, with one paw around her daughter, said, “Thistle came back. Maybe he can, too.”

“No,” Thistle cried, her voice muffled because her nose was once more buried against Ratha’s chest. “Maybe I can come back, but Quiet Hunter can’t. He knows no trails other than the ways of the song. For him ... everything is ended.”

And you cry out in agony because you want to help him just as I want to help you,
Ratha thought.

Ratha was not sure whether she felt stunned, shocked, saddened, or relieved by what had happened. She was, for the moment, thankful that the hunters were too stricken and confused to cause trouble for the Named, although she knew that might end soon. Right now it was Thistle who needed her badly.